I do not know what I would do. I do not know if my courage would stand the test. I hope and pray I would affirm my Lord and my God in the face of death.
To answer Danimal’s question:
Yes, I would lie because I know my wife knows I love her. As to why, pardon me if I presume to infer the assumptions behind your question. My action in refusing to deny God is not for His benefit, but for mine. God needs nothing from me. God is fully aware of everything in my heart, the extent to which I love Him and my cowardice alike.
By maintaining my relationship with Him and refusing to deny Him, I draw closer to Him beyond death. Death is not the ultimate evil to me as a Christian; separation from God is.
When I was 17, a piece of trash walked into the highschool gym, looking for trouble. He decided I was a good candidate, and put a loaded revolver to my upper lip, telling me to pray for a miracle. At this point I was still quite non-religeous (not actually an atheist, but pretty close). I talked plenty fast, but there wasn’t a word about God in any of it. I guess I’m eloquent under stress, or maybe he got a clue, but no shots were fired, and he went to jail. Were it all to happen again today, now that I am religeous, I think I’d still do it the same way.
If it actually came to ‘renounce God and Christ or die’, I’d die fighting (or maybe not die: I’m moderately well-trained in dirty tricks and other ways of ruining a subject’s day).
I’m a Christian. I’d probably get my head blown off. Not because I think it’s a sin to give in to a threat of deadly force, but I’d be sorely tempted to say “Jesus is not the Son of God or I’ll blow your head off!”
I would appreciate you checking. Judaism does have an inherent logic to it - well, more logical than many faiths that I have looked into at any rate. And I really think that while even under duress, praying to another God might not be Kosher (sorry…), but rebuking God while not being made to claim another God would be a different ball of wax.
Incidentally, isn’t all that matters no matter WHAT faith you are is what’s in your heart?
All of you, while quite noble in your pledges to either stay true to your religion or at least hope that you would seem to be missing that point, I think:
If I am saying “I worship Satan” just to get out of a jam but at the same time I am thinking, “Please, God (Jesus, whatever) forgive me for what I am doing,” isn’t it your thoughts that matter more to God here?
Treating the request as a predictable dilema, with a true dichotomy of outcomes is . . . pointless.
This is a nut case. He’s whaco. Clinically speaking, his brains are leaking out his ears. If you do what he says, he might then say, “Ok, now recite the Urdu alphabet backwards, or I’ll blow your brains out.” Simple compliance has no better chance of gaining your desires than does deliberate non compliance. The only winning strategy is not to play his insane mind game, but try to make it human, real, and sane.
He’s nuts. You are not. (Well, for the sake of argument, let’s assume you aren’t.) You have an advantage. Use it.
I don’t think so. There are, IMHO, certain acts that are unacceptable, despite whatever thoughts are going through your head.
The classical argument used in forbidding the murder of someone else to prevent your own is “Who says your blood is redder than his?” (meaning, who says your life is more valuable than his?) This argument doesn’t address your thoughts.
My own take on this (and I am in no way saying that this is the “official” Jewish position) is this:
We (Jews) are put here on earth to perform God’s commandments and to perfect ourselves as human beings. In most cases, saving your own life warrants violating a commandment so that many more can be fulfilled later (hence, it is OK to perform forbidden labor on the Sabbath to save your life). However, there are certain acts that, because of the seriousness of their nature, change the religious nature of a person; in effect, changing them so that they are not really the same person anymore. The three things are the three acts that a Jew is required to martyr himself rather than perform.
In any event, Satan, Jewish law is very clear on the matter: One must allow oneself to be killed rather than violate any of those three commandments, regardless of what’s in their hearts.
I’m an atheist, but things like that don’t bother me. I say “God Bless you” when someone sneezes, etc, etc. I’d say anything to save my life, but like Danimal said, if they had some kind of sincerity meter on them, my brains are as good as splattered.
The problem with the OP is that the given situations are not at all equivalent for the christians and the atheists.
The stated purpose was to find out if “would you say something completely contrary to your beliefs to save your life?”
But to the christians (at least some of them) the situation has implications far beyond their immediate life. It has a bearing on their immortal life, and the disposition of their soul. However, to the atheist the required lie has all of the emotional, moral, and ethical implications of forcing them to swear that Sherlock Holmes lived at 221 C Baker Street instead of 221 B (and thanks to BlackKnight for the SH analogy).
If you want to try to even things out a bit, try asking the atheists a question that carries some equivalent import beyond the immediate situation. For instance “Convince your children, and make sure they stay convinced, that the christian god is real, and that if they don’t believe in that god they will go to hell for all eternity, or I will blow your head off”. This is much closer to a situation that carries the same sort of emotional weight that the alternate side carries for the christians.
Given this question, I would say (as an agnostic leaning toward the atheist side) the nutjob would have to kill me. There is no way I’d do it.
If ever put in this position, I would probably end up talking to the guy and trying to convince him how idiotic he is being and that me stating that God doesn’t exsist isnt really going to change anything. If that wouldn’t work then oh well. I really think that no matter what the guy told me to do, I would try my best to hold onto my beliefs and morals. I mean if the guy told me to make him a balony sandwich or else, I’d do it, but if he said go kill that guy across the street or I’ll kill you I certainly wouldn’t. What the OP asked is along the same lines to me.
Besides that you never know if all this guy wanted to hear is for you to say no go ahead and shoot me. He may shoot you anyway if you deny God. You never know what some looney toon with a gun is going to decide. Also, I don’t know if I could live with the guilt after denying Him.
P.S. didn’t something along that line of questioning happen during the Colombine thing?
No, it didn’t, but the “devouted faithful” like to spread that urban legend around, because it’s a neat insta-martyr story. Last word I had heard on the topic was that it was an overblown UL; survivors in the Columbine library said that they didn’t recall hearing the exchange.
A gun to the head is a pretty quick and painless way to die. Wouldn’t anyone take the bullet now rather than going through your diaper wearing years all over again? The only way that I would lie my out of this situation is if I had a family, which I don’t, so I wouldn’t pray to god, but not because I don’t believe in him.
IIRC, the Columbine story was that one of the JV psychos put a gun to some girl’s head and said “Do you believe in God?” and killed her when she said “Yes.” This was reported by, I think, CNN while the incident was still going on, and was picked up by the other networks, even though it was quickly discounted by eye-witnesses. A lot of fundy elements made the girl who had allegedly said this into a martyr for the faith, all though I don’t think the logic quite holds. The guy’s wandering through his school, killing everyone he sees. Who can say what answer, if any, would actually save your life in that situation? I’d have said yes too, on the assumption that I would be more likely to be killed for not being a believer than for being one.
I’m on the side of agnosticism that is closer to the believer than the atheist, so I don’t really fit in either category, but I’d give either answer. If my God is not some figment of my imagination, it doesn’t care what I say under duress.
I actually considered putting someone in this kind of situation. Back when I was 20 (I was more of an atheist at the time) there was this one guy I hated so much I would frequently find myself plotting his death in intricate detail. The one fantasy I liked most involved me shooting his knee with a large-caliber handgun and then telling him I was going to shoot his balls off if he didn’t denounce God and declare that his soul belonged to Satan. After he did this, I would shoot him in the chest and leave him to die. Though I didn’t really believe in Hell, I was enough of an agnostic to admit that there was a chance it was for real, and in that case death alone wasn’t good enough for this guy, and if it wasn’t real, he’d at least he wouldn’t die thinking he was going to heaven.
Yes, I had a lot of pent-up anger in those days. 8^)
The answer depends entirely on whether there’s an audience.
I’m surprised no one has mentioned Socrates, who was essentially given this very choice by Athens: accept exile and the expungement of all your teachings from history, or drink this hemlock and die.
I’m an atheist, and if I knew the general public would learn of my transaction with the gunman, I’d have to give it very serious consideration.
He believed so strongly that a godless, rational life was the best way to live, that he was willing to die for it!
I don’t know if I’m brave enough to face death for any reason. But if I can be a positive role model to others, I can’t think of a better reason to go off to the big dirt nap.
You Christians who’ve said you’d cave should be ashamed of yourselves. The reason the Columbine UL is so popular is because a willingness to martyr oneself for the faith has always been a Christian virtue.
You’re armchair Christians, happy to attend church and tithe but lacking intestinal fortitude when it comes to real sacrifice. St. Andrew, who was crucified upside down, and the eleven apostles, most of whom were stoned to death, must be rolling over in their graves.
I never meant to imply that their situations were even in the same ballpark. It’s a fact of life that people with different systems of belief and ethics will have different challenges. A no-brainer for one person will be a serious dilemna for another, and that’s partly what I wanted to explore with this thread. [Microsoft]It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.[/MS]